"Don't turn your nose up yet," Kendricks begged. "Wait till you've tasted the spaghetti. And don't look at the tablecloth as though it would bite you. They'll put a clean napkin over it directly and you'll forget all about those stains. This is where one takes off the kid gloves and deals with the realities of eating and drinking. I am inclined to think sometimes, Julien, as a humble admirer from a long way off, that you've worn those kid gloves a little too long."
Julien looked across at his friend. Kendricks was still smoking his pipe and he was evidently in earnest. It was obvious, too, that he had more to say.
"You know," he continued, loudly summoning a waiter and pointing to the table before them, "you know, Julien, I have always had this feeling about you. I think that life has been made a trifle too easy for you. You have slipped with so little effort into the polished places. You never had to take your coat and waistcoat off and try a rough-and-tumble struggle with life. No man is the worse for it. Prosperity and smooth-traveling along the easy ways, even though they come to one as the reward of brainwork, lead to a certain flabbiness in life, lead to many moments when you have to stop and ask whether things are worth while, lead sometimes, I think, to that curious neuroticism from which clever, successful people suffer as well as the butterflies of fashion. You are up against it now, Julien, real and hard. You don't feel that you've got a day to live that you care a snap of the fingers about. You look at what you think are the pieces of your life and you imagine yourself a gaunt spectator of what has been, gazing down at them, and you've quite made up your mind that it isn't a bit of good trying to collect the fragments. Such d——d nonsense, Julien! You may have made a jolly hash of things as a Cabinet Minister, but that isn't any reason why you shouldn't make a success of life as a man. Look here, Carlo," he added, addressing the waiter, "the table d'hôte dinner—everything, and serve it hot. Bring us fresh butter with our spaghetti, and a flask of chianti."
"Si, signor!" the man replied, gazing for a moment in wonder at this shock-headed individual who spoke his own language so perfectly.
Kendricks laid down the menu and glanced across the table at Julien's face with its slightly weary smile.
"Of course, I know how you're feeling now," he went on,—"rotten!—so would any one. Try and forget it, try and forget yourself. Look about you. What do these people do for a living, do you think? They weren't born with a title. There's no one in this room who went to Eton and Oxford, played cricket for their university, and lolled their way into life as you did. Look at them all. The thin chap in the corner is a barber, got a small shop of his own now. I go there sometimes for a shave. He lived on thirteen shillings a week for six years, while he saved the money to start for himself. It was touch and go with him afterwards. In three months he'd nearly lost the lot. He'd married a little wife who stood behind the counter and had worked almost as hard as he, but somehow or other the customers wouldn't come. Then she had a baby, was laid up for a time, he had to engage some one to take her place, and at that time he had about fifteen shillings left in the world. I used to be shaved there every day then. I knew all about it. I used to hear him, when he thought no one was listening, go and call a cheerful word up the stairs—'Shop full of customers!' 'Sold another bottle of hair restorer!' or something of that sort. Then some one lent him a fiver, and, by Jove, he turned the corner! He's doing well now. That's his wife—the plump little woman who's straightening his tie. They come here every Wednesday night and they can afford it. Yet he was up against it badly once, Julien. That's right, look at him, be interested. He's a common-looking little beast, isn't he?—but he's got a stout heart."
"I think," Julien said, "that I could guess the name of the man who lent him the fiver."
"You'd be a mug if you couldn't," Kendricks retorted. "It's doing that sort of thing that helps you to smile sometimes when the knocks come. I tell you, Julien, some of the people—these small shopkeepers, especially—do have the devil of a fight to get their ounce of pleasure out of life. Nothing's made easy for them. They don't know anything about that big west-end world, with pleasures tuned up to the latest pitch, where you do even your work with every luxury at hand to make it easy. There's a little chap there—an Italian. See him? He's sitting by the side of the old man with the gray beard. That man's his father. They both landed over here with scarcely a copper. The young fellow worked like a slave—sixteen shillings a week I think he was getting, and he kept the old man on it. Then he lost his job, couldn't get another. The old man had to go to the workhouse, the young man slept on the Embankment, ate free soup, picked up scraps, lived on the garbage heap of life. He pulled himself together, though, got another job, improved it, saved a few shillings, drove up in a cab and took the old man out. Look at them now. He's got a little tailor's shop not a hundred yards from here, and somehow or other one or two people on the stage—they're a good-hearted lot—have taken him up He gets lots of work and brings the old man here now and then for a treat. How are you, Pietro?" he called across the room. "When are you going to send me that coat along?"
The young man grinned.
"Too many orders to make you that coat, sir," he declared.